The effect of online participation in online learning course for studying trust in information and communication technologies

Among online learning factors mentioned in the education literature, it is argued that online participation is the strongest factor which contributes to online learning effectiveness. Drawing from the theory of online learning as online participation, an online learning experiment was conducted in a well-known public University in southern Taiwan. There were seventy-five International MBA students participated in the study. The online learning course contents were specifically designed for studying trust in Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). Furthermore, the online learning course was designed by incorporating active case-based learning to increase students' trust in ICTs. The experiment results showed that high online participation treatments could significantly increase online learning effectiveness, measured by grades, perceived skill development, and the level of students' trust in ICTs. Discussion and limitation of this study are discussed in the paper.